On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the deadliest grade school shooting in U.S. history (Mark Memmott, “Tragedy In Connecticut: 20 Children, 6 Adults Killed At Elementary School”). It was a grotesque and horrific event that surely should have led to gun control legislation. And yet, nothing of significance occurred. I was in elementary school at the same time of this elementary school shooting. Though I was largely oblivious to the tragedy at that age, I later would interpret it as the moment that this country decided that it would not act to attempt to protect my life. People would rather briefly grimace at the news and move on. It was a stance that flew in the face of the hidden message in all of my history lessons, that progress was a march that never stopped, only moved forwards.

I assert that a memorial is needed to challenge our understanding of historical political progress and confront our modern country's unprecedented passivity in almost all political issues. The aim of this memorial would be to inspire viewers to take substantive action, whether it would be for their communities or for the nation at-large.

It is vital to have a memorial dedicated to our inaction because inaction is a unique dimension of the character of the modern United States. In his article “The Case for Reparations”, Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses how the mass carnage and devastation of the Holocaust led way to calls for justice, in the form of Germany giving survivors financial reparations (Coates 10) — a tangable, substantive action. He cites how, initially, only 29% of West German citizens believed they should have to pay reparations. But another roughly 40% may have agreed that reparations were appropriate, but believed that “only people ‘who really committed something’ were responsible” for paying (Judt, Postwar^[1]). As reparations were paid, beginning in 1952, German citizens began to make sense of their shared roles in the Holocaust and their responsibility to atone for, in this case, the economic harm to Holocaust victims and Jewish communities. As a result of this understanding of the need for substantive action, reparations paid to Holocaust victims by Germany — and therefore by German taxpayers — continue into the present (Timsit).

We in the United States are missing that collective understanding. Echoing the situation in Germany post–WWII,^[2] only 29% of Americans support cash reparations to the descendants of slaves (AP-NORC, “The Legacy of Slavery”). But claiming the two political situations are alike based on that figure is an incomplete assessment. Firstly, remember that in the U.S. today, there is no parallel to the two-fifths of Germans who were to some degree supportive of payments, but did not recognize their own responsibility. Secondly, the Americans sampled in the previous figure includes Black Americans; only 15% of White Americans support reparations (AP-NORC, “The Legacy of Slavery”). The bill that Coates endorsed (H.R. 40), which will only take the first step by creating a committee to study reparations, has continued to sit in committee, where it seems destined to die once again — though it has gained almost 196 House cosponsors and 22 Senate cosponsors (U.S. Congress).

So how would inaction be embodied in a memorial? The primary element of my proposed memorial is a triskelion of flowing water stemming from a central bronze pillar. The bronze pillar is reminiscent of the “guy on a horse” discussed in Carolina A. Miranda's Los Angeles Times commentary. But instead of some statue resting on top of the pillar, there lies a spout of water. The water rushes down in three directions, turning to form three curves that hug three gathering spaces. The current represents the legacy of political change that precedes us, which we understand through stories and history textbooks, and which we assume is a constant. It represents all of our ancestors, in a way a statue never can. The curves and the rushing water they contain are abruptly blocked by tall glass walls, which not only represent the present, they represent the viewers — a connection made by the walls' partial transparency (so that viewers can see the water crashing into them) and partial reflectance (so that viewers can see themselves). The curves continue, but through metal paths, turning back into the other curves to shape the gathering spaces into circles. Where the water represents evolution in the past and the walls represent stagnation in the present moment, the metal paths represent what could be the future of progress, if not for today's rigidity failing to continue the momentum of the past.

In addition to serving as a mechanism for contemplation, my proposed memorial would function as a gathering area. As such, there are benches in the regions opened by the incompleteness of the curves, the incompleteness of progress. If you are resting or working at one of the benches in the memorial, the motion of the water occurs in the background, mirroring how political motion often occurs on TV in the back of living room conversations. No matter which bench you sit at, you can see the memorial throughout your peripheral vision. The benches also somewhat face each other and are in contained spaces, so they work to incite conversation, of whatever types (but hopefully including substantive discussions).

The discussion that I hope is facilitated might seem antithetical to the message of the memorial — after all, time and effort discussing acting is time and effort that could be used to act. But truly meaningful action can only come after deliberation. These discussions can potentially turn into infighting, as investigated by Katherine Hite in her article “Texas, monuments, toward a politics of self-reckoning”. Hite details how the Wilco Patriots, an anti-Confederate monument activist group in Williamson County, Texas, was divided between those who favored “accommodationist” approaches and those who favored “confrontational approaches” (Hite 1309). These aren't inherently bad debates — in fact, they are necessary ones. But it is critical to understand that this infighting can derail organized action, which Hite illustrates by alternating descriptions of these debates with the actions of Texas Republicans making it more difficult to remove the monuments (Hite 1309).

The major divide that my proposed memorial aims to address — within each viewer through contemplation and between viewers through discussion — is between those who believe political progress is inevitable and those who believe progress requires ongoing efforts and urgency. This dichotomy is encapsulated in Cathy Schneider's article “Police Violence and Community Based Resistance in Seine-Saint-Denis, Ferguson, and New York”, in which she details the 2005 unrest in France following the deaths of Bouna Traoré and Zyed Benna in a police chase. A local activist, Moghdad, reflected on the riots: “We tried to keep the kids calm. We told them that there would be an investigation. They should not let things get out of hand” (Schneider 73). Although Schneider frames this expression within her argument that accommodationist approaches are more effective than riots, which are largely counterproductive, it reveals a dichotomy between those who believe progress will surely continue (the camp Moghdad falls into) and those who attempt to ensure it really does continue (the rioters^[3]). What Schneider fails to mention in her article is that there was an investigation, which led to a trial almost ten years later, and then an acquittal of the police officers involved (New York Times Editorial Board, “A Lingering Injustice in France”). In other words, no real progress was made through the existing system, extinguishing the insinuation that justice can be served absent activist work.

My proposed memorial can't resolve today's big problems. It can't solve police brutality, end gun violence, begin reparations, or change everyone's minds about Confederate statues. But no memorial can. Instead, my memorial would provoke questions about action, focusing thoughts and conversations within this space on our stagnation and the futures of political motion.